Fresno Unified Superintendent Michael Hanson says it's no secret the district's dropout rate is unacceptable.

"I'm very public about it," he said. "We don't shy away from the challenges we're facing. If we lose even one kid, that's too many for the community."

But Hanson bristles at critics who say the district is ignoring the problem.

The superintendent, fresh from last month's contract extension and a positive evaluation by five of the seven district trustees, said the graduation rate continues to improve at Fresno Unified schools.

Hanson added the district is fighting the dropout problem on multiple fronts, including educating parents about the value of graduating from high school, studying the causes of truancy and investing in vocational education.

"We have a problem but the district is on the right trajectory," he said. "It's hard work."

Hanson and the district have been under fire in recent weeks for high truancy and low graduation rates.

Last month, a series of articles in The Bee highlighted the district's truancy and dropout problems. One of the articles told the story of 17-year-old Junior Villarreal, a habitual truant and borderline dropout who was killed in a fight during school hours last spring.

Junior was just one of 5,765 Fresno Unified high school students who qualified as habitual truants in one semester last year, according to district attendance documents obtained for the series.

Hanson didn't respond to interview requests for the series, which was written and researched by California State University, Fresno, graduate student Tracey Scharmann for an in-depth reporting class. The class is taught by journalist and author Mark Arax, who has publicly criticized Hanson in the past.

But in response to the series, the superintendent wrote an opinion piece that was published in The Bee on Friday, and also sat down for an interview about the district's dropout and truancy prevention programs for this story.

The series discussed the difficulty in pinpointing dropout or graduation rates and the different ways they can be calculated and reported. For example, according to the state education department's database, the 2010 graduation rate for Fresno Unified could range from 66% to 72.5%.

The Bee series also used a more basic calculation, comparing the number of graduating seniors in 2010 to ninth-graders four years earlier. Using that method, which doesn't account for students who transfer in or out, the number of students who graduated in 2010 was 53% of the number of freshmen in 2006.

Hanson flatly refutes the 53% graduation rate, calling it "completely inaccurate."

Instead, he points to California Department of Education data, which counts the number of official dropouts in grades 9-12 as reported by the district. Those figures show the district graduation rate rose from 69.1% in 2007-08 to 72.5% in 2009-10. Graduation rates for 2010-11 haven't been released yet by the state.

"It's an oversimplification to say that we're not doing anything about dropouts," Hanson said. "Our graduation rate is steadily improving."

In fact, Hanson said, the district is doing more than ever to address the causes of truancy and dropouts. In October, the district started a six-month study with the help of a $30,000 grant from the Fresno Regional Foundation that will look into the causes of chronic absenteeism.

Dan DeSantis, the foundation's CEO, said if the study is successful, Fresno Unified may get a share of $600,000 for early literacy and attendance programs.